The 2nd Hardest Truth I've Never Told
Trigger warning: The hardest thing I’ve ever shared was this, The Story I’ve Never Told.
The second hardest thing is this:
My name is Olivia Young and I am an addict.
For as long as I’ve acknowledged pain, I’ve been addicted to it
Since my first trauma, suffering became normal, pain became easy, and
I became my suffering. Why ask for help? I can do it myself.I need not rely on anyone, because I had me, And so I became addicted to overcoming
Because I was trained to endure, everything.
I am a survivor, but
I became my pain, because consciously, I had no one else to blame.I used to jokingly say, If i didn’t feel it, it never happened.
That was funny, when describing a workout class, but not when I started remembering
how many times I’d been raped. Or why I transferred from college, getting black out drunk,
Dissociating so I wouldn’t remember what happened. Pain, hardship, suffering has always felt easier to me, then simply feeling, Because since I was five, I’ve never really felt anything. I became a machine.Sure there were glimmers of joy between bouts of detachment,
And attachment to people, places, things, that never chose me.
Trauma froze me in time, Took me out of my body and moved me up to my mind, where I was safer. Trauma took my voice away, so people pleasing became my story, NO was removed from my vocabulary early, leaving me afraid to speak honestly, stand up for me, choose my sovereignty. And when I was old enough, I started numbing —with sweat, work, booze, boys, food, I starved or stuffed my feelings, and took up purging after a violent rape just barely a teen, Anything to escape myself.
Anything to feel something.
Its been a minute since I’ve shared because truth is, I’m living it. One month ago, I dove into cohabitation. Moving out of the first place that felt like home, in me personally + in Austin, left me ungrounded, out of my routine, and the grounding practices I spent so much energy building. Cohabitating is challenging. Week 1: I had nowhere to hide in my feelings except the guest room closet, But No One puts Baby in the Corner, Except Baby. So I put myself in time out, to feel it out, while simultaneously working out the knots in me so I could re-emerge clearly and then, I started spinning. Everything becomes amplified when you’re cohabitating. Especially after a year and a half of uprooting a lifetime of trauma. Healing upstairs alone was in my control. That was easier.
My intermission from intimacy felt timely, albeit unplanned, and truth is intimacy has taken up less space, significantly. For the past couple weeks I’ve been baking, incubating, sitting in my feelings, Not stuck, just settling, finding my footing. I’ve concluded that Growth is exhausting. But with every fiber in my being, I feel it happening. I’m changing, rapidly. Body settling. Trauma exiting. Heart opening. More life, less existing. The power, the pleasure, the gift, of presence. But only if I allow it. As much as pain has chosen me, I’ve chosen it.
With the pain, there was and is positivity, early on, along my way, At 15, I picked up yoga, which started as self-sabotage at 110 degrees, my sweaty self hate reflecting back at me, became strengthening, and boxing, is the reason why I’m still here, my therapy, Facing myself every day on a heavy bag, to feel my strength and regain my energy. Physical movement has kept me going. And yet as remnants of trauma exit me, I still find myself choosing suffering, because pain comes more naturally. But I’m tired of suffering.
One month into cohabitation and I was resenting him for moving in, even though he’s done everything to build a home together — fixing, hanging, painting, agreeing on my furnishing to make me comfortable, and still I couldn’t get past what wasn’t working. I claim “messy is sexy,” really meaning vulnerability, but literally see my messy as sexy and pick at his for just being messy. Because unsettled invaded my entire being. The hurt parts of me still untrusting, the unlovable pieces still rejecting dancing as a constant state of being, so instead of celebrating in our first month cohabitating, I’ve been fighting more than flowing.
Within the first week I was in full shut down, aka Freeze, a trauma response leaving me here physically but not mentally. Not sleeping, finding safety in the closet, forgetting to breathe. I called my healer and she explained that I was re-experiencing trauma subconsciously. Trauma takes parts of you, leaves you stuck in ages and places that you don’t remember consciously. But the shut down was heavy, frozen and shrinking into old habit and story, sitting in the shower just praying for relief, like I used to decades ago. Thank God for the tools and the support to help me: plant medicine, breath work + energy to feed me what I needed to see — In a plant medicine therapy, I was shown the rooms in my new home resembling those where I’d been assaulted previously, my subconscious mind wasn’t separating: age 17 a master bedroom, age 14 a master bathroom at my former friends homes. I was reacting to my past not my present, to violent memories, but the fear was reappearing, and crippling.
Once I faced my subconscious, I recreated my reality, but I was still hiding. The fear and anger turned to sadness after week three, meditating in my closet recognizing the weight of the anniversaries: two years since my grandmother Honey died, two years since I opened Box + Flow 2.0 Flagship studio and three weeks later closing, Covid, and 18 years since he raped and left me for dead in the shower at his son’s high school party. I sat in my fight, in my knot wondering,
Why do we run from all of this pain instead of allowing ourselves to feel it?
It wasn’t until week four that I untied it, realizing, MY Anger Is Warranted!, not because of what “happened” to me, but how it continues to grip my reality. As I allowed the sadness to wash over me, I finally understood that choosing pain has always been easier than receiving love and hiding in my corner feels safer than overcoming. For the majority of my life I’ve lived in the addict of my mind, choosing alone instead of playing with others. But the victim in me that knows she is no longer a victim but a survivor, safe, loved, free — if she sees herself, frees herself and allows herself to be seen. Whoa. That. Sounds. Scary.
But life seems to be requesting more of me, tempting me with reason to step out of the fight and into my light — cohabitating, collaborating, collectively. The universe is summoning me, come out and play … But am I ready? To step into my power fully? To flip the script, absorb the love, let the wounds scar and own my healing?
I meditated, listened and prayed, and continued to bake, because the words I’ve so long wanted to say feel dark and scary, but being fluffy and stuffy never served me, I just want to be honest, even if its triggering. It should be triggering to call out pain, buI know I’m not the only one suffering. And this cake, This truth and freedom filled confection might be my tastiest, but the ingredients are self-rising.
I stop running to lose me and finally emerge to find me, Week Five. Gloves on yet again, but for the first time in a while not fighting, but dancing, With each punch I’m releasing, finding my rhythm, regaining confidence in me + my journey. My punches get stronger, less flailing, more reason, I’m letting go, And it all begins unraveling…For the past month Baby has been in the corner for good reason, (including my ambivalence to my boo, who thankfully is forgiving) but is staying for no reason: I am the one choosing fight. Fight is no longer choosing me. And only I can set myself free. And turn my pain into power.**
This is where the true work begins — beyond psychedelic assisted therapy, the integration, integrating the trauma into my life, a part of but NOT what defines me. I am bigger than all of the shadow that derails me even momentarily, and sends me freezing or running and hiding. I now know what haunts me, but no longer succumb to my own suffering. I’m breaking the cycle.
I get home and rip off the layers of sweaty spandex and finally feel the knot in my gut, release. I shower quickly before heading to the airport. En route, tears flowing, Florence + the Machine’s new song blasting:
My whole life I’ve fought me, chosen hard, because to me that was surviving. Hard came easy. It’s what I’ve done my whole life to protect me, subconsciously. Harden. Suffering came naturally. I never understood easy. But it’s no longer my story, I’m writing a new version of me, the one that chooses me, that softens and embraces easy, the one that sets herself free. I used to run up and down the West Side Highway everyday and take a photo of the Freedom Tower, quoting “Freedom is the Forgiveness We Give Ourselves.”
The only way I can create change, is if I change the way I see myself. I’m tired of choosing pain and fight and challenge and fear. Baby is emerging from her corner, ready to play. The cake is baked.
I think it might be my most delicious.
Starting now, I’m choosing freedom,
I’m choosing love, Im choosing me,
Life in itself is a privilege,
It’s time I start Living. …
…
With this share, I also acknowledge the pain our collective world is in, with this, “I am washing my face before bed while a country is on fire. It feels dumb to wash my face and dumb not to. It has never been this way and always been this way. Someone has always clinked a glass in one hemisphere as someone loses a home in another, while someone falls in love in the same apartment building as someone grieves. The fact that suffering, mundanity, and beauty coincide is unbearable and remarkable.” — Marian Andrew.
**Pre-psychadelic assisted therapy + memory, Turning Pain Into Power